Any Given Moment (The Alexandra Chronicles Book 3) Page 23

  "I volunteered and now it's more important than ever that I stay where I am," Patty said. "Besides, as awful as Ted was tonight, he did bring my suitcase, so at least I have clothes."

  "How are your children?"

  "The boys feel much like their father, though my daughter, it seems, is beginning to think I might be more than just a regrettable, nagging mom. She told Ted I was probably making up for having married so young." She smiled, shaking her head. "I was just lying here thinking she could be right."

  Elizabeth smiled. "But they're getting along all right?"

  "Oh, sure," Patty said. "They're wonderful kids, and Ted is a teacher and a coach—it's not as if he hasn't spent a major amount of time with teenagers and adolescents. And the kids are good about doing chores; even the boys can cook if a gun's put to their heads."

  Elizabeth nodded. "Well, just remember, if you think it would be a help for us to arrange for someone to clean or cook—"

  "Oh, God, no," Patty said. "If someone else were paying for it, Ted would go crazy."

  "Okay, but you just let me know if there's anything I can do. All right?"

  Patty nodded.

  "Georgiana's coming back."

  "Really?" Patty hugged her knees.

  "On Wednesday. I suggested she stay here with us. She could use the Hillingses' room."

  Patty threw her head back and laughed. "Oh, how my life has changed. Little League one day, house guest with Georgiana Hamilton-Ayres the next!"

  Elizabeth smiled. "Let's hope Monty will behave himself."

  "Yes, I noticed that," Patty said. "What is it between those two?"

  Elizabeth shrugged. "An error in judgment, I suppose."

  "She didn't sleep with him, did she!"

  Elizabeth lowered her eyes. She hadn't expected Patty to catch on so easily. "Look, I don't want to—"

  "Oh!" Patty said, covering her mouth. "That's very funny!" Reading Elizabeth's expression she added, "It's not that I think Monty's unattractive. It's just that he's such an overgrown kid, you know? And Georgiana is so deadly attractive."

  "Interesting choice of words," Elizabeth said.

  "How could he think a woman like that would be interested in him?" Patty mused.

  Elizabeth looked at her. "You really don't like him, do you?"

  "Oh, I do. It's just that he's such an awful braggart on the radio, he really drives me crazy. I always have to turn him off. But in person, I do like him, Elizabeth. Still, the thought of him trying to handle a woman like that..." Her voice trailed off.

  "A woman like what?" Elizabeth asked.

  "Let's just say I'm sure Georgiana's not exactly what his mother had in mind for him," Patty said, laughing again.

  "So only a homely wretch could be interested in Monty, is that what you're saying?"

  Patty looked at her for a moment. "No, Elizabeth," she said gently. "What I meant was, Georgiana doesn't seem intellectually or spiritually suited to him. As a matter of fact, it's a complete miss, and I guess I'm rather surprised he could think otherwise."

  Elizabeth nodded, a thoughtful look on her face.

  Patty touched her arm. "I haven't offended you, have I?"

  "Me?" she asked, surprised. "Good heavens, no, I was thinking about Monty. I'm not sure I've ever met anyone so lonely, so cut off. And it's strange, isn't it? Since so many millions of people listen to him every day?"

  "And what about you, Elizabeth?"

  Elizabeth's eyebrows shot up. "Me?"

  "And David," Patty said. "There's something between you, isn't there?"

  Elizabeth hesitated and then nodded. "We used to live together. We were going to get married, once. But that was a while ago."

  Patty looked shocked. "I had no idea."

  "I had no idea he was coming to the meeting. He didn't know I'd be there either."

  "It must have been quite a shock."

  "You've got an early morning, you should get some sleep," Elizabeth said, standing.

  "So do you," Patty pointed out.

  "Monty and I are just going to go over some of the file notes and then we'll call it a day. I really appreciate what you're doing for us, Patty," she added as she opened the door.

  "I'd like to think I'm doing it for myself, too. Good night."

  "Good night," Elizabeth said, closing the door.

  On the other side of the door, Elizabeth let out a long sigh. She wished she knew for sure how she felt about anything right now. Something was changing, that was for sure, but what, exactly, she didn't know.

  37

  He sneezed again.

  "Monty, you've got to put one of these on," Elizabeth said, tossing him a disposable surgical mask like the one she was wearing. She was also wearing latex gloves. They were in a storage room of U-File-With-Us in Queens, searching through what seemed like endless stacks of cardboard boxes containing one dusty file after another.

  "I wish to hell we knew what we were looking for," he muttered, reaching for the mask. After he broke the strap yanking it on, Elizabeth got up and went over to help him put on another.

  "There," she said, "you look like a surgeon."

  "I feel like a fool," he mumbled. "What, in God's name, are we looking for anyway?"

  "We'll know it when we find it," she promised. "But in the meantime, pull anything that looks interesting." To her, this was like old home week, so accustomed was she to spending days on end in rooms just like this, operating on the faith that something of value was there. To her this felt extremely productive, but to poor Monty this was next to torture.

  If the dust didn't get to the novice researcher, the hours of crouching and straining one's eyes did. And then, of course, there was the lack of a specific direction or precise goal. For people used to exact achievement, as Monty was, searching for "something" could quickly exhaust their patience.

  "You're doing a great job," she told him. "Just hang in there, ­we'll find something."

  She walked over to her area of boxes and squatted down again, sifting through the next one. Monty was watching her. "I brought you a radio for later."

  "For what?" she said, distracted, looking through files.

  "So you could listen to my show."

  "Oh, thank you, that'll be nice."

  "Nice," he muttered, watching her ignore him. He pulled the surgical mask down around his neck. "You're going to have to come on my show before this is over, you know. I haven't had a lefty on in years."

  Her head snapped around. Now she was paying attention to him. "What makes you think I'm a lefty?"

  "You're an academic. It goes without saying."

  "You sound just like David," she muttered, standing up.

  "Oh, great," Monty said.

  "You're not all that different, you know. It's just that you make a living by espousing your views in an entertaining way."

  "And so do you, Professor Robinson."

  "Damn it, Montgomery!" she said, finally losing her patience. "How dare you say such a thing to me, having never set foot in my classroom! How dare you say that I teach my own personal political views! I am sick and tired of your pompous attitude, your sweeping generalizations, and while those might work on your radio show, I am not a member of your audience and I am not amused—I am a professional teacher, and I will not tolerate one more snide com­ment from you about something you know absolutely nothing about! Have I made myself clear?"

  Monty felt as though a steamroller had just stopped a few inches from his face. "Looks that way," he said after a moment.

  She stared at him. "Good. Because I've had it with you."

  "Elizabeth," he said, sounding wounded, "I said you had made your point, all right?" He gave the box in front of him a shove. "Did it ever occur to you that I might say those things just to get a rise out of you? That you're not exactly a fountain of information about yourself? That you're not exactly easy to get to know?"

  She looked at him.

  "You practically refuse to talk about yourself and I'm cur
ious," he said. "So I bait you and you talk. But I still don't know anything, except that you're in love with David Aussenhoff." When there was no answer he continued. "And what do you know about me? What have I told you?"

  "You've been married and divorced once; no kids; you're from LaBelle, Florida; you never graduated from college; the Hillingses discovered you and got you a radio show; and you think you're in love with Georgiana—"

  "Hey!" he said, making a cutting motion in the air. "You don't know that."

  "Fine," Elizabeth said, walking away, "I don't know anything about you."

  He watched her, disappointed she wouldn't talk anymore. "Not that I don't want to be in love," he added. "I think being in love is nice."

  "Take it from me, it all depends on how it comes out," she said, sifting through another box. "Listen, Monty, we've got to get back to work."

  "Yeah," he sighed, "okay."

  "I'm going to start a pile over here for anything that looks like it could be something," Elizabeth said, squinting at a file and ig­noring his forlorn look.

  "Oh, wonderful," he grumbled, putting his surgical mask back on. "Anything-that-looks-like-it-could-be-something goes over there. Yeah, I got it."

  "Like this," Elizabeth said, walking over to him. She knew that if she didn't get him excited about something fast, he would look at these files without seeing anything at all, his eyes glazing over and his mind wandering. Then she'd end up having to go through all the files he'd done all over again.

  She squatted on the floor next to him. "This is an official trans­fer of an author's titles from another literary agency to Hillings & Hillings."

  Monty frowned. "Shouldn't that kind of information be kept in the office?"

  "It's probably on computer. As for this," she turned it over to look at it, "this is a carbon. The original document must either be in the office or with—" She stopped, noticing that Monty was staring at her in a peculiar way. "What is it?"

  He yanked his surgical mask down, breaking the elastic again.

  "I wish you would stop doing that," she said, taking it from him, "we only have about ten more."

  He grabbed her arm. "Elizabeth."

  "What?"

  "I'll bet you anything Berns is looking for an original rights agreement to some literary property. If he just wanted general in­formation, they could have gotten it off the computers."

  "And the people he sent to search were a lawyer and an accoun­tant," Elizabeth said, slowly standing up straight and pulling her mask down under her chin.

  "Something to do with law and numbers," he said, getting ex­cited. "I bet they're looking for the original of something so they can destroy it."

  "Well, let's think," Elizabeth said calmly, starting to pace. "If that's true, what kind of documents do people try to destroy? Wills, certainly."

  "Did Henry do wills?"

  "I know he did a literary estate rider on my will saying where my papers go, who's the executor, that kind of thing."

  "Did we see anything about wills in the record log?" he asked, looking around at the boxes and boxes of papers.

  "No," she said. "But wills wouldn't be in storage, would they?"

  "I don't know," Monty said, frowning. "So what else? What else do people destroy?"

  "Deeds," Elizabeth said. "Property deeds."

  "Property rights, in this case!" Monty said, hoisting himself up. "That would make sense," Elizabeth said slowly. "This paper I was showing you is a transfer of representation of rights."

  "Okay, but what kinds of rights?" Monty asked, looking down into his open box. "I don't know what any of these book projects are. I've never heard of them. We've got to talk to Henry. We can't figure this out ourselves."

  "What we really need is Dorothy. She's the one who would know."

  "So we'll start with Henry," Monty said, accidentally bumping up against her as he dusted off his chinos.

  Their eyes met and they both froze there for a moment.

  And then Monty murmured an apology and Elizabeth backed away a step, saying they needed to find a telephone.

  "Georgiana," the smooth, pleasant voice said, "what luck to find you at home. It's Creighton."

  "Creighton," Georgiana repeated, wishing she hadn't picked up the phone. She had actually stood there in the kitchen of her house in Bel Air thinking, Don’t answer it.

  "Georgiana, I've got to tell you how deeply hurt and disap­pointed I am in you. Last night, I was lying in bed, and my wife woke up and asked me what was wrong, why I wasn't asleep. Do you know what I told her, Georgiana?"

  "No," Georgiana said, finishing pouring a cup of tea.

  "I told her that you refused to do a favor for me. A favor that would have cost you nothing. And do you know what my wife said?"

  "No," Georgiana said, reaching for the honey.

  "She asked me why you didn't like me. Don't you like me, Georgiana? Aren't you my friend? I thought we were friends."

  Creighton sounded as though he had gone off the deep end.

  "Well, Creighton," she said slowly, watching a thin stream of honey fall into her cup, "I didn't like your making my press agent resign."

  "I didn't do it!" he practically shouted. "I would never do any­thing to hurt you, Georgiana! It's you who want to hurt me! I know it, don't lie to me!"

  "Creighton," she said, a chill running down her spine. "I told you I was sorry I couldn't appear at your press conference, but my refusal to get involved with this controversy on a public level is hardly a hostile act toward ICA." She slowly stirred her tea.

  "It's hostility toward me!" he cried. "I thought I could trust you! You're conspiring against me and I won't allow it!"

  "Creighton, I think you're twisting things out of proportion," she said. "It's true that I've loved the Hillingses since I was a little girl, and that they took care of me— Creighton?"

  He had hung up. Georgiana sighed, rubbed her eyes, took a sip of tea, and called him back. His secretary said he was unavailable. Could she take a message?

  "You could tell me if he's all right," Georgiana said.

  There was a moment of silence. "Yes, of course he is," the secretary said.

  "I'm frightened for him," Georgiana said truthfully. "He sounds as though he might be having an adverse reaction to medication—or something."

  "Mr. Berns has been working extremely long hours lately," the secretary finally said. "It may be he is severely overtired. I would not take it personally, Ms. Hamilton-Ayres."

  Georgiana hung up, thinking, Fine, I won't, and called Eliza­beth to tell her something was wrong with Creighton Berns, and she was getting the hell out of L.A. and coming to New York.

  38

  "No offense, boss," Monty's producer said during the break, "but the show really sucks. What's with you?"

  "Tired," Monty sighed, throwing the headset down on the con­sole and stretching, yawning.

  "You haven't gone over any of the notes, any of the faxes, you're not even listening to half the callers," Mike continued.

  "Any more Milky Ways?" Monty asked.

  "And you're probably putting on five pounds a day with this junk. If we ever manage to salvage the TV show, what the hell are you going to look like?"

  "Here's one," Monty sighed, pulling a candy bar out of the pocket of his jacket hanging on the back of the chair. He glanced at the clock and put his headphones back on.

  "Try and pull yourself together, Monty," Mike said, "or at least explain to people what's going on. Everyone thinks you're losing your edge." He stormed out of the studio, closing the door behind him.

  Mike had been with Monty since long before Monty became a household name. He was talented and ambitious, and he had been salivating at the thought of the TV program. The really big money was made in TV. And all he—and everyone connected to Monty professionally—knew was that the big guy's personal life was some­how threatening the success of the whole enterprise. And for what? A couple of old people who needed to retire?

 
; In one regard Monty knew Mike was right. The show today was for shit. His listeners were annoyed with him for being exhausted, for having nothing left for them. The show was suffering; it lacked its usual punch.

  Monty knew the schedule he had to keep to produce the show that had made him a star. First rule: no life outside of the show on weekdays. He was up at five and out for a walk, usually in the dark. He ate breakfast while devouring newspapers and magazines and faxes from around the country. He had no writers. It was all Mon­ty's reactions to the news and opinions of the day and his "straight­ening out" his listeners as to the correct point of view. He went into the studio around ten and did the show at eleven, central time, opening with twenty minutes of commentary, followed by phone calls from around the country.

  After the show, he went to lunch, went for another walk, and began the awesome task of reviewing the video bits his assistant producers had assembled of various news items of the day. At night, he watched the network news, CNN, DBS, C-Span, and whatever else was relevant. He owned three TVs and six VCRs and had to use them all to do his job properly. He did not eat out on weeknights. He did not talk on the phone to people. He did not even open the mail. All of that was done on weekends, if a speaking engagement was not scheduled.

  And Monty could feel how fast that routine—the routine that had made him a success—was falling apart after even the slightest deviation from his routine.

  However, for the first time in a long time, he did not feel lonely and he was surprised to find how much that meant to him. He always experienced a flush of warmth and contentment when he arrived at the Hillingses' apartment, because there was always some­one there to talk to, someone who asked him how he was, how his day had been; someone to eat with, to be with, and to meet other people with. Things were happening in his life; he was not just sitting around—alone—commenting on what was happening to other people and to the country at large.

  But no one ever said success was achieved without sacrifice. And after this thing with the Hillingses was over, Monty would return to Chicago and to his routine, he would get his TV show back on track, and his life would once again belong to the career he had always longed for.